Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [139]
Even as the small package slipped over the side, she didn’t cry out or turn to James or Sam for comfort. She wanted to join her daughter in a watery grave. Yet she knew if she tried to run forward and throw herself in, someone would try to stop her, and failure would make her feel even lower.
*
Agnes Tippet, one of the Marines’ wives, watched Mary walk away from the service, and turned to the women next to her. ‘She didn’t care one bit,’ she said in shocked tones. ‘No tears, nothing. I’ve never seen anyone bury a child with such a hard face.’
Watkin Tench heard Agnes’ remark. ‘Be quiet, you foolish woman,’ he snapped at her, incensed. ‘You have no real idea what she’s been through, or how she feels inside. Count yourself lucky your children are well, and don’t make judgements on another.’
As Tench strode away, he could hear the women whispering among themselves and he choked back tears of sadness and frustration.
He knew Mary so well. She would not burden anyone with her grief, least of all him. He had seen the desolation on the faces of James, Sam, Nat and Bill, and he knew it wasn’t only for the little girl they’d all come to love and look upon as their own, but for her mother as well. Mary had saved their lives, been a friend, sister and mother to each of them, and they all knew this latest tragedy had broken the last of her spirit.
Back in Sydney a year earlier, their escape had been a huge shock to Tench. He had believed he knew Mary and Will well enough to guess if they were hatching something like this up, yet he hadn’t had the faintest suspicion.
He didn’t have much faith that they would make it to the Dutch East Indies, for by all accounts it was a long and dangerous voyage. Yet he understood why they felt they had to attempt it, and greatly admired their courage.
He had missed Mary so much. Hardly a day passed without him thinking about her. He offered up prayers for her safety, and a small part of him believed she must have survived, because he was sure he’d feel it if she were dead.
Even as he packed up his belongings to leave Sydney Cove, Mary was still on his mind. He could see her small, eager face in his mind’s eye, the way her eyes used to light up when he called at her hut. He could still see her slender but shapely legs as she tucked her dress up to wade into the sea and help with the seine net, and her dark curly hair tumbling about her face as she washed clothes. Yet it wasn’t the physical things about her he missed the most, it was her inquiring mind, her dry sense of humour and her stoicism.
Even if he had known she’d survived, he would never have considered he might run into her again. When Captain Parker told him in Cape Town that they would be taking deserters from Port Jackson back to England for trial, then named them, Tench was utterly astounded, almost disbelieving.
It seemed to him then that his fate and Mary’s were linked. That God in his infinite wisdom had always intended them for each other. This belief grew even stronger when he talked to the surviving men and learned of the voyage, and how Will and Emmanuel had died in Batavia. He was of course distressed to think that Mary had lost her husband and her little son, but according to the other men Will had betrayed them all, and he hadn’t got to know Emmanuel as well as he had Charlotte.
Then Mary came aboard, so weak that she collapsed, and sweet little Charlotte, the child so many of his men believed was his, was mortally ill. Under the circumstances it wasn’t appropriate to tell Mary what was in his heart. All he could do was make sure she and Charlotte got whatever they needed to recover, and that he was around when she needed a friend.
Yet it had become even less appropriate to tell her how he felt since Charlotte’s death. She had survived the hulks, the long voyage to New South Wales, and four years of near-starvation in the penal colony. She’d had the audacity to plan a fantastic